Book I, Part I - Desolation in Solitude: Chapters 32 - 34 Summary

Kerouac muses that the Forest Service is nothing but a front for a totalitarian government who severely restricts the movements of people when they visit the nation's forests. It is also a front for the lumber interests who work "in cooperation" with the Forest Service to log out trees year after year, using the precious trees for items such as toilet paper. What America doesn't use, nature burns. How did nature handle deforestation a million years ago?

Kerouac contemplates the "bottomless horror" of the world and recalls the times he took long "depression walks", like the night the author's father died or the time Kerouac was so depressed and stressed that he called Madeleine Watson to ask for a date because he wanted to marry...